A Japanese Quote by 斎藤 茂太 That Highlights The Importance of Failure In Our Life

If you want to succeed in life, you must learn from your failures.

人生に失敗がないと、人生を失敗する

[by 斎藤茂太 (Shigeta Saito), a Japanese psychiatrist and essayist]

If you have no failure in life, you will fail in life.

If anyone would have asked me in my school years what motivated me to pick up a book and study hard, I would have answered instantly the fear of failing in that subject. The fear of being left out of our friend circle and getting stuck in the same class would motivate me to study hard.

The majority of us to date is motivated by the fear of failure. The odd thing about this motivating force is that people only put in the effort to meet the deadline or to make it in time to avoid the fear. Nothing exceptional can come out of the efforts that are put in to avoid failure.

Failure is the mirror that helps us introspect within. It points out what we are missing in this journey to excellence.

Failure is portrayed as the stepping stone to a successful life. Without failure, there would be no challenges to overcome. Without failure, we won’t be able to see or utilize the latent potential within us. Challenges help us sharpen our skills. Challenges make us who we are and help us envision what we can be.

Lucky are those who fail early because they become apt enough to overcome those failures in the early part of their life. Failure makes them not only skilful and powerful enough to overcome it, but they also develop a growth mindset in the earlier phase of their life.

They view failure as an opportunity to learn something new and a chance to develop or strengthen their skills. A growth mindset helps us to develop a never giving up attitude.

That means we should not seek out failure. However when we encounter failure, never bow down and call it quits. Fight it. Tame it. Learn from it and make a mark because those who never fail would never get acquainted with their true potential.